Buzzard shadows stencil fog— wings overlapping Eagle’s black shadow summer hunter winter hunter How do I love thee? What clock ticks the paces one heart to the next wingbeats invisible to the naked eye? Below live the mussels Ouichita and Pink Paper with wings of thin shell shining rosy flanges immersed in mud. My armspan is a forgotten measure like a cubit— half-length of a hand. My shoulderblades clasp paired muscle wings.
Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, won Red Mountain Press Editor’s Choice Award for Shadow Light: Poems. Other books are Turtle’s Beating Heart, memoir (U. of Nebraska Press) and Casino Bestiary: Poems (Spartan). She has won 3 Ks. Notable Book Awards and other recognition. She teaches in Baker University’s MLA program. www.deniselow.net
Monthly Editor Melissa Fite Johnson’s first collection, While the Kettle’s On (Little Balkans Press, 2015), won the Nelson Poetry Book Award and is a Kansas Notable Book. She is also the author of A Crooked Door Cut into the Sky, winner of the 2017 Vella Chapbook Award (Paper Nautilus Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Broadsided Press, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Melissa teaches English and lives with her husband and dogs in Lawrence, Kansas.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 